Collecting Macromolecular Crystallographic Data at

Synchrotrons

Andrew HowardACA Summer School12 July 2007

Synchrotrons are useful, not just fashionable

• You can do almost any experiment better and faster at a storage ring than in a conventional lab; and there are experiments that you can only do at a storage ring.

What we need to think about

• Why synchrotrons help: Factors, parameters

• How they make things harder

• How synchrotron data collection is different from domestic data collection

• How macromolecular crystallography is different from other storage-ring apps

How synchrotrons help

• Fluence

• Brilliance

• Tunability

• Collimation

• Resources

• 1013 Xph/s/mm2

• 1017 Xph/s/mm2/mrad2

• E = 12398.0 ± 0.4eV

• FWHM(v) < 100 µm

• Lasers, experts, labs …

Some definitions and unitsQuantity Definition Units Value

Flux # photons / Xph/ 1012

unit time sec

Fluence flux / unit area (Xph/sec)/ 1013

mm2

Brilliance fluence/ Xph/sec/ 1017

solid angle* (mm2-mrad2)

Brightness flux/solid angle* Xph/sec/ 1016

mrad2

* Sometimes defined in terms of bandwidth, e.g.brilliance = (fluence/solid angle)/bandwidth

Which parameters really matter?

• For most macromolecular crystallographic experiments fluence is the relevant parameter: we want lots of photons entrained upon a small area

• Brilliance matters with very large unit cells where a high divergence is bad

What does high fluence do?

• Allows us to get good signal-to-noise from small samples

• Allows us to irradiate segments of larger samples to counteract decay

• Many experiments per day

• Allows us to contemplate experiments we would never consider with lower fluence

What does high brilliance do?

• How do we separate spotsif the unit cell length > 500 Å?

– Back up the detector

– Use tiny beams

• Large beam divergence will prevent either of those tools from working

Tunability

• Monochromatic experiments:We’re allowed to choose the energy that works best for our experiment

• Optimized-anomalous experiments:We can collect F(h,k,l) and F(-h,-k,-l) at the energy where they’re most different

• Multiwavelength:pick 3-4 energies based on XAS scan and collect diffraction data at all of them

What energies are available?

• Depends on the storage ring

• Undulators at big 3rd-generation sources:3-80 KeV

• Protein experiments mostly 5-25 KeV– Below 5: absorption by sample & medium

– Above 25: Edges are ugly, pattern too crowded

• Some beamlines still monochromatic

Energy resolution &spectral width

• Energy resolution: how selective we can reproducibly produce a given energy– Typically ~ 0.4 eV at 3rd-Gen sources

– Need: E < [Epeak - Eedge (Se)] ~ 1.4 eV

• Spectral width: how wide the energy output is with the monochromator set to a particular value

Collimation

• Everyone collimates. What’s special?

– Beam inherently undivergent

– Facility set up to spend serious money making collimation work right

• Result: we can match the beam size to the crystal or to a desired segment of it

ResourcesStorage rings are large facilities with a number

of resources in the vicinity

• Specialized scientific equipment (lasers)

• Smart, innovative people

• Sometimes: well-equipped local labs where you can do specialized sample preparations

Why wouldn’t we do this?

• Beamtime is still scarce

• You’re away from your home resources

• Disruption of human schedules

– Travel

– 24-hour to 48-hour nonstop efforts

– Bad food

• Extra paperwork:Safety, facility security, statistics

How does synchrotron crystallography differ from lab crystallography?• Time scale very foreshortened

• Multiwavelength means new experimental regimes

• Distinct need for planning and prioritizing experiments

• Robotics: taking hold faster @ beamlines

How does macromolecular crystallography differ from other beamline activities?• “Physics and chemistry groups at the beamline

do experiments;crystallographers do data collection”

• Expectation: zero or minimal down-time between users

• Often: well-integrated process from sample mounting through structure determination

Where will we collect data?

• SER-CAT: 22-ID

• SBC-CAT: 19-BM

• GM/CA-CAT: 23-ID

• NE-CAT: 8-BM (perhaps)

• DND-CAT: 5-ID

• BioCARS: 14-BM-C

Southeast Regional CAT (22)• Established ~2002

• Run as an academic consortium of about 25 universities, mostly in the southeast, with some legislative or provost-level support

• 30% of my salary from there!

GM/CA-CAT (23)

• Established around 2004 as a site for NIH GM and Cancer grantees, particularly those working on structural genomics and cancer therapeutics

• First APS facility to build out multiple endstations on an insertion device line that are capable of simultaneous use

BioCARS• Established around 1997 to do cutting-

edge crystallographic projects, particularly involving time-resolved techniques and BSL-2 or BSL-3 samples

SBC-CAT

• Oldest macromolecular crystallography facility at the APS

• 19-ID: more structures solved than any other beamline in the world

• Good for all sizes and resolutions